Jason Deal

The Advocate

Wednsday, “Shaun of the Dead” co-writers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright sat down on the phone with reporters from across the country to talk about the weirdest and scariest romantic comedy to come to the United States this year.
Released in the U.S. on September 24, “Shaun of the Dead” stars Jessica Stevenson, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighty, Penelope Wilton, Lucy Davis, Dylan Morgan, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, and co-writer Simon Pegg as Shaun.
Shaun is your everyday idler; an under achiever who drifted through an otherwise flaccid life. Then, one day everything went haywire. Shaun suddenly found himself in the middle of a zombie onslaught threatening to bring an end to civilization.

So Shaun had to rise to the occasion and fight off the hordes of zombies or suffer a gruesome fate.

As they sat at their homes and offices in London, Pegg and Wright answered questions from reporters calling from as far west as Oregon and as far east as New York.

The 45 minute phone conference was a cheery one. Pegg and Wright talked about the movies that inspired them to make Shaun of the Dead and some of the funny and interesting aspects of the movie.

During the conference, Pegg and Wright revealed that “Shaun of the Dead” was inspired by the movies they loved to watch growing up such as the “Night of the Living Dead” and the Evil dead trilogies, “American Werewolf in London”, and others.

A fascinating and very funny aspect of the movie: The names of each of the movie’s main characters rhyme with their fate: Shaun is reborn, Liz lives, etc. An interesting point about the character Barbara, played by Penelope Wilton, is that her namesake comes from the original “Night of the Living Dead”.
They also revealed that Lucy Davis (“Dianne”) is a regular cast member of the hit British sitcom “The Office”, where she plays Dawn Tinsley.

Probably one of the oddest things discussed about the movie is how they actually wrote it. Pegg and Wright were asked by one reporter “which came first, the love film or the zombies?” To which they replied “um…the zombies.” From which point they went on to explain that they always wanted to make a zombie movie but didn’t decide to make their vision a reality until they came up with the idea of giving it a romantic comedy hook.

They felt that a lot of ground had already been covered in the zombie movie genre and thought the idea of a romantic comedy crash landing in the middle of a cult zombie flick was original and too good to pass up.

The question of a sequel came up and to which, Wright replied “We have thought about it. Really, it’s a bloody tricky prospect.” Mostly because, as he said, most of the cast members die in this movie.

So far, “Shaun of the Dead” has gotten critical success. Fans of the zombie movie genre have, according to Pegg and Wright, responded very positively to the movie, and noteable figures such as director Quentin Tarantino are calling it the best movie of the year. Will “Shaun of the Dead” become another cult classic? Only time will tell.